I mean really out to sea, on the actual ocean, as opposed to the shallow animatronics approximation that is the basis of the lucrative Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise – now hopefully (but by no means certainly) concluding with a third instalment, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which jumps the gun (even as it walks the plank) with across-the-continent public showings tonight in advance of tomorrow's "opening."

Oh, how we scoffed back in 2003 at the very notion of a feature film based on a creaky old theme-park attraction – wasn't that supposed to work the other way around?

Not this time, anyway, thanks to the courageous comedic commitment of two actor's actors, Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush, a digitally desiccated horde of boneyard buccaneers (and their undead monkey mascot) and perhaps somewhat also to the doe-eyed charms of chemistry-challenged love interests Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley.

The original Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, was a well-deserved and largely unexpected hit. The second, Dead Man's Chest, while sporadically entertaining, was a confused and overlong mish-mash. The third, At World's End, shot immediately thereafter, is even longer – a butt-barnacling 2 hours and 48 minutes – and even more confusing.

Worse yet, aside from a couple of stirring old-school pirate battles and that same mugging monkey, the movie is dismally, deathly dull.

Which brings us back to that real-life ocean voyage, the best metaphor I can come up with for the essential arc of the entire Pirates trilogy (again, we can only hope – there is reason to suspect otherwise).

Like an actual ocean voyage, the first leg of the Pirates trip was a giddy, somewhat disorienting experience, heightened by our anticipatory excitement and the thrill of the unknown.

Then came the middle part, through becalmed, deeper, murkier waters, which initially made you feel a bit queasy, then flattened out into an endless, featureless vista of not very much of anything at all.

The second movie tossed the old horde overboard to make room for new decaying pirates made of bits and pieces of fish and ships.

It also gave us a new actor's actor, the usually admirably understated Bill Nighy, managing to emote even through layers of wriggling digital tentacles as the doomed Davy Jones. And there was still Depp, and his undeniably entertaining prancing sot of a sea captain.

And now we find ourselves nearing the end of our voyage, increasingly bored and listless and anxious to get the hell off this damned boat, feeling all parched and dehydrated inside, and sodden and damp and mildewed outside in places that are very hard to reach.

It's not all bad. This time out, we get Nighy (his squidly tentacles even more agitated), Rush (no longer quite dead) and Depp, which almost makes up for the fact that the writers, having so ridiculously padded out Dead Man's Chest, suddenly have no idea whatsoever to do with the two attractive young people, let alone the other new characters they have introduced.

And that includes the wasted and pointless Keith Richards cameo you've heard so much about (hidden behind a prosthetic nose large enough for him to have inhaled his father before he was cremated).

Their combined efforts notwithstanding, the movie is relentlessly dense and unfathomable; Depp, the heart and soul of the series, doesn't even show up till several reels in (and then, ad nauseum) and would now seem to be in another movie entirely, his reeling, riotous Capt. Jack now sadly somehow out of his depth (or rather, Depp-th).

This is not your father's pirate movie. Hard to believe it's even Uncle Walt's. The film opens with the public hanging of a scruffy young singing street urchin with the face and voice of an angel, sentenced to die just for consorting with pirate types.

Now you tell me, what kid in his right mind is ever going to want to get on that Disneyland Pirates ride with this image burned into his impressionable young brain?

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